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Lemon Garlic Yogurt Glazed Pollock with Garden Salad and Radish

Today was our CSF’s fish delivery day! They emailed and said cod would be the day’s fish, but they delivered instead pollock, and life was good. It was either far easier to fillet than cod, or we’re simply getting much better at filleting whole fish.

Say hello to Pietro the pollock. He weighed in at about 7 lbs.

And he is, as you can see by comparing his length to the newspaper below him (this is the 16″ fold), at leat 20-22 inches long. Yeah, baby!

I’ve read that one of the ways to judge the freshness of a fish is to see how clear its eyes are. See how clear Pietro’s eyes are? It’s like looking through the clearest sea waters. This bad boy has only been out of the water for a few hours, and in a few hours more he’ll be in my belly.

Thirty minutes later, I’ve flayed his fillets from his frame, and Clayton has shaved off the skin. These are the best fillets we’ve harvested so far, and we’re very proud of how much we’ve learned since last May, and earlier last May. (I’ll try to post more of our CSF adventures.)

These two items rather set the flavor for the night. It’s kind of all I had. It looked like it was going to rain on my bike ride home, so I ended up skipping Whole Foods and hoping my paltry pantry would fill in the blanks. Really, if you have lemon and garlic and fish, you’re golden.

The radishes came from today’s farmer’s market, and the avocado from my downstairs neighbor (to whom we gave the other fillet of pollack, just ‘cuz). The lettuce is from our garden, and that tomato is just hanging around — I didn’t end up using him.

Radishes. I *love* them. And these, fresh from the farm, are tangy and sharp. Wash ‘em up.

I’ve learned, since slicing the tip of my finger off with this contraption, how to use this contraption so as not to slice the tip of my finger off. It’s not just using the hand guard, which only works with vegetables that are cut in such a way to have a flat edge facing the blade *AND* the guard (and since there are no square vegetables, you have to prep everything to become square)… it’s setting the thing over a bowl so that the ridge at the bottom of the front of it locks it into place over the bowl, allowing the sliding action of your veggie to not slip all over the place (resulting in said fingertip-cutting-off-effect).

Aren’t they beautiful? I have both red and pink radishes here.

Oh yeah, and I also mandoline some white onion into the bowl, after adding enough EVOO to cover the sliced radishes, and enough sea salt and black pepper to flavor the dressing. Finish it off with only a scant tablespoon of white wine vinegar, and set aside to marinate.

Then add your floured fresh fish fillets to the pan, and set to sear on medium high heat.

After about 8 minutes, the “cooked look” worked its way up to the top of the sides of my fish. Time for flipping.

Flipped. See how nice? Sear your fish now for another 5-6 minutes, or until steaming hot completely through.

The ingredients for my pan sauce: lemon, minced garlic, the leaves off a sprig of this herb our neighbor grows in his garden (which Clayton can’t remember right now…), about 1/2 cup of white wine, and another tablespoon of butter. Remove the fish from the pan add the butter, the garlic, the juice from the lemon, the wine, and simmer over medium high heat.

At the last moment, I decide to sweeten the pot by adding a few tablespoons of yogurt to the pan.

See how nicely it’s all come together? I add my julienned unknown herb (which smells like cinnamon, and Clayton thinks is “Asian Coriander”), and then simmer for another moment or two. It doesn’t thicken as much as I want, so I end up straining the sauce over my fish…

Clayton’s garden greens are served with friendly avocados, and topped with my marinated slivers of tangy radish and sweet onion. My planks of pollock are perfectly seared, and topped with a rich complex cream of lemon and garlic. A fresh, light, summer meal.